Comics artist / Illustrator / writer

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HELLO! It’s been a while. I’ll be refreshing this site over the coming weeks as and when time allows, but today I am announcing a shiny new project which you can BUY from next week. Want to know more?

Riding a tidal wave of optimism, your new favourite singer is Prime Minister of Great Britain. Events turn even more unlikely when he and his plans for change meet the shapeshifting lizard people that really *are* in charge of the world…
Basically, this is what happens when you’re watching election coverage and start reading a stack of crazy illuminati/conspiracy theory guff at the same time*.

Lizard Men is a six issue mini-series to be published by Comichaus that is written by me, with art by awesome Italians Catia Fantini (lines) and Chiara Bonacini (colours), lettering by Ken Reynolds and editing by my long-time collaborator Mira Manga. I’m excited. This idea has been bouncing around my brain for so long that to see it as an Actual Thing That Exists is amazing, let alone to see it bought to life by a team as fantastic as this one. If there’s any justice, by this time next year Catia, Chiara and Ken will be MASSIVE. Issue 1 was completed last month and we’re launching a Kickstarter campaign next week – on the 1st November – as a pre-order system for the issue and to raise funds for the printing. Did I mention that I’m excited?

I’m drawing the covers, the first of which you can see – alongside a sample page – below. Click to enlarge.

*Essentially, Jon Ronson’s Them: Adventures with Extremists, John Higgs’ PEERLESS The KLF: Chaos, Magic & The Band Who Burned A Million Pounds were the entrance to a rabbit hole.

So last week was AMAZING. The Lizard Men issue 1 Kickstarter launched and hit target within a couple of hours, which was far beyond my expectation and a HUGE relief! So now we’re on to stretch goals, which are…

STRETCH GOAL 1: If we hit £800 (which at time of writing we’re only £70 short of), we’ll commission my good friend Mr Eddie Argos of Art Brut to produce a Lizard Men painting and all physical backers will get a THANK YOU postcard print. I love Eddie’s paintings. You can read about how he’s painting a load of people’s favourite albums over at Clashmusic. Christmas is coming and Dog Man Star is awesome, in case anyone’s interested.

STRETCH GOAL 2: If we hit £1000, one lucky backer – chosen at random – will get Eddie’s original painting.

STRETCH GOAL 3: If we hit £1200, I’ll create a Making Of Lizard Men eBook for all backers. It’ll contain original sketches by Catia and I, some stuff on process, discussion of the various influences and more.

STRETCH GOAL 4: If we hit £1500, I’ll sort us all a whacking great celebratory party in London, probably in February 2018 to allow us all to get Christmas and January out of the way. It’ll include a little conversation, a little live music and I’ll come out of DJ retirement especially. I’d say I’ll play a set of random, eclectic stuff, but in reality it’ll probably be like a re-run of my old club Nuis@nce with added Human League. The NO OASIS rule will still stand. Though side note – and long-time friends will be shocked by this statement – I’m moderately interested in the new Noel Gallagher record just because anyone who has someone playing a pair of scissors onstage with them is alright by me.

So, please do spread the word! And if you haven’t backed it yet, there’s still time. JOIN US. It’d be AMAZING to do any of those things for you. Yes, YOU.

On top of all that fun, we had our first review courtesy of the fine folks at Big Comic Page. And – oh, thank the lord! – it’s a good’un. “It’s a fantastic elevator pitch of a first issue which introduces us to the oddly likeable Zamani and the weird, supernatural conspiracy he seems to have stumbled headlong into” according to them, which – quite frankly – I’ll take. Read the full thing here.

And I did an interview with the equally loveable types at Pipedream Comics, talking about the comic (obvs), influences, design choices and how I’m very aware of my first name. Click here to read my waffle.

“Chalk exemplifies what I’m loving about Comichaus, it’s a blistering, genre-splitting shot in the arm that shows us the basics of the strip’s premise but injects enough mystery to make us want more.” – A Place To Hang Your Cape

“Beautifully drawn…we’re confident in saying it’s one of the most hard hitting intros to a story and despite playing its cards close to it’s chest it’s clear Chalk is going to be a flagship for Comichaus.” – Pipedream Comics

Across the UK and at exactly the same time, an unspecified number of people put down their phones, tablets or laptops and kill themselves.

A young woman receives a call from another, visibly older woman, who says “Sorry mum” before doing the same.

What’s that all about, eh?

Chalk has featured in the Comichaus anthology from issues 3 through to 8. It will return in issue 11.

Next week sees the publication of Tempo-Lush Tales, an anthology of comics written by Richy K. Chandler. Richy is one of those people who is a bit sickening, being very good at a lot of different things. We originally met probably just over a decade ago when my friend Deborah and I were pulling together a band. He could drum, y’see. He slipped me a CD of his self-produced songs. The guy can basically play lots of instruments, and, it turns out, in the 10 years since we last met, he’s also been making some basically awesome comics including stuff like Lucy The Octopus, Rosie & Jacinda, Adventure Time and Wallace & Gromit. All of which you can read about here: http://www.tempolush.com . So he can write, he can draw, he can play a bunch of instruments and he can write songs. I know, right?! I bumped into Richy at a couple of comic cons and we talked about working on something together. Shortly after the script for Smokey Digital Seahorse landed. “Blimey.” I thought to myself. “This is a bit good.” Which is what I say out loud when I’m thinking “OMGOMGAMAZING!”

Smokey Digital Seahorse is a very intimate story about time travel, life, loss, and seizing the moment. I really enjoyed drawing it. I actually miss drawing Susan, the lead character. Early warning to everyone I ever work with from now on: I’m probably going to sneak her into the background of every comic I ever draw from now on. I felt a bit bad that I’d spent most of the 10 pages drawing her moping quite a bit so thought I’d cheer her up a bit in a little sketch that got a bit out of hand. So here you go:

I recently went back and started redrawing elements of the Emily Kane comic I drew for the Art Brut app last year. Mainly for a portfolio piece, but also just to apply some new stuff I’ve learnt. I’ll be doing a full colour, relettered version as a freebie download later in the month, but in the meantime, here are the black & white pages. In case you’re interested, like.

I was decidedly chuffed to be asked by Eddie Argos to illustrate the cover for his latest book, Any Questions? The Complete Art Brut, a collection of his lyrics over the last 10 years. And, to be fair, they are BRILLIANT lyrics. You can buy it here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/any-questions-the-complete-lyrics-of-art-brut-2003-2013 . I’ll probably do a post about the design process at some point, as it was a lot of fun with lots of back-and-forth between Eddie & I.

20 pence to the first person to guess which book cover is referenced by the design, and a further 20 pence to anyone who can spot the Doctor Who reference.

CALMzine is the magazine of the Campaign Against Living Miserably. You can find out more about their excellent work at http://www.thecalmzone.net . The next issue – out on 25th November features a cover illustration of main interviewee Frank Turner and a couple of pages of other bits of art by, well, me. Hurrah! Without the text it looks like this:

Got WELL excited this week when my copy of Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell’s Zenith arrived this week. One of my favourite comics, that, and Steve Yeowell is a brilliant artists who has been a massive influence on me. So decided to do a little sketch. It got a bit out of hand. D’oh.

Then on the Wednesday I made an appearance on the Joyzine show on Radio Croydon. I was there to talk about The Islanders, but other topics of conversation included my history as a failed indie pop band, my Britpop club night Nuis@nce and how I came to find myself playing in a regenerated version of top Britpop act Menswe@r. With Johnny Dean. You can download it as a podcast here: http://croydonradio.com/podcast/show.php?HistoryID=d865576e-93a0-08af-253f-5a80ea3036db I rock up around the second hour of the show. Thanks to Paul Madden for having me on!